Attitudes towards anxiety medications here?

Worth mentioning that the doctor's reaction may partly be a paperwork thing rather than pure ideology. Alprazolam is a Betäubungsmittel-adjacent controlled substance here and prescriptions for it are tightly logged, so a GP who hands it out casually can get flagged by the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung. That gives them a professional incentive to say no even when they privately think it's reasonable. If you want a fair hearing, a Facharzt für Psychiatrie at a PIA (psychiatrische Institutsambulanz) is the better route, they deal with panic disorders daily and won't treat the request as drug-seeking the way a random Hausarzt might. Charité and St. Hedwig both run PIAs, though getting in without an acute crisis takes patience.

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the hausarzt thing is real but there's a workaround people dont mention much. if you have US records, get them translated by a beeidigter Übersetzer (costs maybe 30-50 euro per page) and bring the actual paper to a psychiatrist, not a GP. german docs put way more weight on a translated document with a stamp than on you telling them your history verbally. also worth knowing: your US insurance wont work here but if you're on public insurance (or even private) a psych appointment is covered, the wait is just brutal, often 3-6 months for a kassenpatient. you can call 116117 and ask for a Psychotherapie/Psychiatrie termin, they have to find you something within a few weeks if you say it's urgent. dont expect xanax specifically either, they usually push Tavor (lorazepam) or sometimes just give you a few tablets of something for emergencies only.

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Yeah, that's pretty standard here. Benzos like Xanax (often just called Alprazolam or Tavor here) are seen as a last resort, and most Hausärzte won't touch them, you'd usually need a psychiatrist (Facharzt für Psychiatrie) and even then they hand them out sparingly. Your GP's bedside manner sounds rough, but the caution itself is normal, so I'd look for a psychiatrist rather than shopping around GPs.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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